The emergence of Social Media has had big influence to the marketing communication and made WOM communication even more important from Company X’s perspective.
When asked has the emergence of Social Media affected the importance of WOM communication from the company’s point of view Manager Y said:
“Yes, absolutely. All twitters, facebooks and youtubes, without even mentioning various education or teacher specific communities have increased a lot of the importance of WOM communication from our company’s point of view.”
And he continued:
“If our marketing communication is divided into parts I would say that traditional face to face WOM is 50 percent, eWOM about 30 percent and other means of communication is the rest 20 percent of our marketing communication,”
The integration of Social Media into the marketing communication mix started few years ago in Company X. And as the change started early within the company and the company is on top of it now the issue is to “get it right.” “Since Social Media itself, is changing rapidly the biggest thing is to keep up with the progress,” says Manager Y. Now the company is in good situation where Social Media has been integrated to the marketing communication mix and it is working for them. The next step, according to Manager Y, is the creation of community of communities which sometimes are referred as “mashups.”
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“Social Media is a good way to access people and that would not be possible even if we had a very good tradeshow every day because that would only be 365 tradeshows a year and the amount of people we would reach would be significantly lower. With social media we can reach millions of people instantly.”
As said before, Company X started to use Social Media as part of marketing communication mix few years ago. The trigger came from the development that is slowly ongoing in the industry and in customer’s methods of education. The company has to keep up with the development of their customers and the company realized that at the same time they also can utilize Social Media in their marketing communication efforts. The development that is ongoing in the education field comes from the pressure from students and their families. Students, sometimes referred as the “netgeneration,” are using all kinds of Social Media applications everyday and they are demanding that school system adopts the same technology that they are using in their private life.
About the state in which education systems state now, Manager Y gave a good example:
“If you would have been a doctor in 1850’s and would been put in a hospital in the 21st century, you couldn’t do anything because the technology has changed so you would not be able to do your work as you have used to. But take a teacher from the same era and put him into a class room he could start teaching right away. That tells how old fashioned teaching methods still are.”
The development of technology hasn’t reached the educational system yet but it is coming, says Manager Y. “Our plan is to try to influence the paradigm shift that is going on in the education systems by utilizing Social Media in our operations and encourage the customers to follow our lead.”
Now Company X is utilizing many Social Media platforms already, for example the company has own channel in Youtube and society in Facebook (Youtube 2010; Facebook 2010). The next step that the company is currently working on is to make the Social Media
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At the moment Company X is developing their strategy concerning Social Media and for example the company is currently creating an educational specific social media platform where teachers can share ideas and material with their peers and at the same time students can share their knowledge and help each other in language studies.
“Regarding Social Media in general the first thing is to understand what are those mega trends that are ongoing, what is going to be the next step in social media and the who has the answer is going to be a billionaire.”
says Manager Y.
From Company X’s point of view, the advantages related to Social Media are limitless.
Though, one disadvantage from using Social Media is, according to Manager Y, that it is not personal enough. The company’s sales are based on interaction between people and the product characteristics demand personal illustrations. Because of that Social Media is the way to attract people and initiate communication among consumers but the actual selling process needs to be done personally.
Good example of Social Media use is the current virtual education community that Company X has created and it can be found and accessed from their web pages. The community has thousands of members, mainly teachers around the world, who are sharing teaching materials, ideas and information about the company’s products.
The downside related to using Social Media, according to Manager Y, is spamming. There are people who post unrelated comments on the company’s social media platform and their purpose is not to take part in on the conversation but to sell or advertise something totally unrelated material.
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